The occupational therapy section has exciting news this year! Along with our current staff: Pat (Lead Occupational Therapist), Karissa, Sam T & Jenne we have recruited two other therapists. Nicole who will join us in August and Kyla who will join in September. Sam HJ will be on Maternity leave from July 2024 to June of 2025. With the extra staff we are very hopeful to decrease our waitlist in early intervention which has been extremely long in the last couple of years (around 190 children). We will also be offering school aged children access to Occupational therapy for a fee, to help them with goals the family would like to work on as private services in Prince George are very limited.
Some areas that we can help with are: fine motor (including grasp, hand strength, printing), visual perception, attention, sensory processing, picky eating, sleep, social skills, and overall function in activities of daily living. We are currently looking at some group options that may be of interest to school age children in the areas of social thinking and fine motor.
OT will continue to offer individual and group sessions for our preschool children as well, in Prince George and on outreach to Mackenzie and the Robson Valley. In the past year in Prince George we ran gross and fine motor groups and a playground group with physiotherapy, social thinking groups and handwriting without tears groups. All were well attended and feedback on the groups was very positive. We hope to continue offering these groups in the new school year.
All our staff continue to seek out professional development to ensure we are continuing to use the best practice for all our therapy services. This year our focus will be on Education around virtual therapy provision and the F-Words (Fun, Family, Fitness, Function and Friends.)